• The Second Murderer, by Denise Mina (Mulholland):
Before there was AI, there were “legacy authors”—writers hired by assorted and often dubious “literary estates” to dig up beloved series characters once their creators had shuffled off this mortal coil, and put them through their paces once again.
All the biggies (Gardner, Hammett, Fleming, Spillane, Larssen, Christie, etc.) have been “honored” in this way, with results that have ranged from sublimely respectful to Ka-ching! Ka-ching! ridiculous. And now it’s Raymond Chandler’s turn.Again.
There were originally seven novels by Chandler featuring his iconic Los Angeles private eye, Philip Marlowe. Naturally, the character has been pastiched before, but the increasing frequency (Ka-ching! Ka-ching!) of these “tributes” to Marlowe is rather troubling—the last one (which was wretched) was published just a year ago.
Somehow, though, Scottish author Denise Mina has beaten the odds. She may not have nailed Chandler’s style (Who could? Really?), but she’s certainly nailed Marlowe. She digs in deep, working through the caustic cynicism, the sardonic wisecracks, and the drinking, prying off that hard-boiled shell, exposing the bruised romanticism and crushed idealism of his gooey center.
It’s a staggering achievement; Mina not only “gets” Marlowe, but also the sweltering L.A. of the 1940s, thanks to an astounding amount of research (bitching about the heat while riding the open elevator in the un-air-conditioned Bradbury Building? Brilliant!), and an almost supernatural understanding of a time and a place.
Marlowe is hired in Mina’s tale to find runaway socialite Chrissie Montgomery, but he’s not the only one. Also on the case? His former inamorata Anne Riordan (last seen in Chandler’s Farewell, My Lovely from 1940), now working as a private investigator herself. Their forced partnership is uneasy, and the ex-lovers are frequently at odds—over the case, their methods, and their shared past, as they crisscross the City of Angels, bouncing from the lowly flophouses and dive bars of Skid Row (and even a “kittens-only” lesbian joint) to the lofty heights of the Montgomery estate, and back again.
It’s all so Chandleresque: the heartbreak, the melancholy, the misunderstandings, the lies, the vividly drawn characters, the bitter taste of truth and the inevitable acknowledgment that, even more than
80 years after Marlowe made his debut, it still isn’t a game for knights. Mina may not “speak” Chandler, but Marlowe? She nails that poor son of a bitch. I just loved it.• Holly, by Stephen King (Scribner):
What a fucking book! Since his career began, Stephen King has teased us with promises of a straight-up crime novel, one utterly devoid of any hint of woo-woo. Finally, after more than a few entertaining shucks and jives, he’s delivered, in what may one of his finest works ever. There are no vampires, sewer-dwelling killer clowns, or haunted Plymouths, but there are monsters.
The only catch? The monsters are us, or more precisely, they’re Rodney and Emily Harris, a couple of utterly unremarkable elderly professors you might run into at your local supermarket or the library. But monsters they are, and the evil they inflict on the sleepy college town they live in is almost too disturbing to stomach.
Enter private eye Holly Gibney, of the Finders Keepers Detective Agency. One of King’s most enduring characters, she was introduced in 2014’s Mr. Mercedes as former cop Bill Hodges’ new investigative partner, and went on to appear in now three more books, plus a novella. In Holly, she’s hired by a woman named Penny Dahl to track down her librarian daughter, Bonnie, who vanished three weeks before, leaving behind a note that read, “I’ve had enough.” As COVID-19 rages across the world and the Trump presidency staggers through its final bloody months, eccentric but endearing Holly is on her own, having recently buried her mother (an anti-vaxer brought down by the pandemic). Still emotionally fragile, with more issues than a magazine stand (OCD, synesthesia, sensory processing disorder, and she’s somewhere out there on the spectrum), Holly is also blessed with a keen intelligence, a savant-like memory, and some pretty savvy detective chops. But as she digs into this case, she discovers more people missing, and that real evil comes from within.
That’s just King reporting on human nature … being what it is. He pulls no punches in these pages, and digs right into the guts of who we are as a people at this moment. Those with delicate sensibilities might shy away, but this is a major work, no matter how you slice it.
• The Autobiography of Matthew Scudder, by Lawrence Block (LB Productions):2023 was a good year for some of my favorite series characters to make appearances. But this one was unexpected. For years, Lawrence Block has made a pretty good living, fictionalizing the adventures of New York City private detective Matthew Scudder, who has appeared in novels, short stories, feature films, and even a graphic novel. But the now 85-year-old Block, who has admitted to telling lies for fun and profit, may not have always told the whole truth. Which is where this fascinating “autobiography” (purportedly written by Block, whose name is on everything), comes in. Not that Mr. Scudder is here to set the record straight, exactly. He’s more or less content with any dramatic license Block took over the years. What’s he’s more interested in doing is making some sense of his own life, as a form of self-therapy, dutifully recalling his past in daily installments.
And so Scudder scribbles away, occasionally balking at some details but diving deeply into other facets of his life that he thought he’d forgotten. This work covers only the first 35 years or so of Scudder’s existence on the planet, because he figures Block’s books have already presented a “sufficient printed record” of his years since. Thus, we see the future sleuth as a child, a young man, a student, a husband, a cop, and an alcoholic, casually meandering here and there, a conversation not so much read as overheard.
“Regrets. Yes, of course. There are things I could have done better,” Scudder confesses at this book’s conclusion. “But no bitter regrets, not really, because I truly like where I am. And the trip that got me here has had its moments.” By that point, I suspect most readers—and certainly fans of Mr. Scudder—will agree.
• Gotham City: Year One, by Tom King and Phil Hester (DC Comics):
This graphic novel (collecting all six issues of the 2022-2023 mini-series, plus a few tasty extras) ain’t for kids. Set two generations before Bruce Wayne's birth, it stars tough-as-nails Samuel Emerson “Slam” Bradley, the hardest-working private eye in the DC universe,
a two-fisted palooka who brawled his way through more than 150 cases, and was actually the star of Detective Comics before Ol’ Pointy-Ears showed up.In the ever-elastic world of comics, it’s 1961, and Bruce Wayne hasn’t even been born. Slam’s hired by Richard and Constance Wayne, pillars of Gotham society (and Bruce’s grandparents), to investigate the abduction of infant Helen Wayne, the so-called “Princess of Gotham”—a crime already being dubbed the “kidnapping of the century.” This is a noirish, brooding tale, all dark blunt shadows and family secrets, and the slash-and-burn angular artwork of Phil Hester, wielding a limited color palette to astounding effect, complements the tenebrous and heart-wrenching story—proclaiming this … this is something different. Lines of class and race rip through Gotham like a chainsaw, with Slam Bradley trying to work a case where everyone is lying, and writer Tom King uses that as a springboard to question everything from civic corruption and policing to the civil-rights movement, challenging the previously established history not just of Gotham City, but of Batman himself (he appears in a framing sequence).
There’s sex and treachery and nods to the notorious Lindbergh kidnapping and Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, and the secrets exposed here will knock sharp-eyed BatFans off their keisters, and plenty of 10-year-old fan boys will be left scratching their heads. We’ll tell them all about it when they’re older.
• Last Seen in Lapaz, by Kwei Quartey (Soho Crime):
Ex-cops turned private eyes are, of course, a dime a dozen in the Shamus Game, but young Emma Djan is something else. Cut adrift from the Ghana Police Service in Accra, her dreams of becoming a homicide detective (like her father) turned to dust, she goes to work instead for the tight-knit Sowah Private Investigators Agency, run by Yemo Sowah, the “Old Man” (all detective agencies beyond a certain size seem to be run by the “Old Man).
Like its predecessors, The Missing American (2020) and Sleep Well, My Lady (2021), this novel is billed as an “Emma Djan Investigation.” But these are really rarities in the genre: honest-to-goodness P.I. procedurals, following the whole team as they work a case to its conclusion—slowly, calmly, methodically, and—as the circle of suspects narrows—most inevitably. Emma may be Sowah’s youngest operative and the only woman
among them, but she more than carries her weight, with a definite knack for undercover assignments. She may chafe when her male co-workers mock her “woman’s perspective,” but she’s one tough (and infinitely polite) cookie.This third entry in Quartey’s increasingly fascinating and eye-opening series finds the team looking into the disappearance of Ngozi, a young Nigerian woman bound for law school, who has fled to Ghana to be with Femi, the new love of her life. However, he’s not quite the Prince Charming she imagined, and soon she’s a suspect in his murder. That would be story enough played straight down the line, as the crew work the case with their typical slow-burn professionalism, but the author cracks his plot wide open with multiple points of view and timelines, exposing the evils of human trafficking in West Africa. It’s not a pretty picture, and Quartey doesn’t point fingers or offer simple solutions—but insists that readers (and, hopefully, the world) bear witness.
Other 2023 Favorites: A Death in Denmark, by Amulya Malladi (Morrow); Death of a Dancing Queen, by Kimberly G. Giarratano (Datura); The Running Grave, by Robert Galbraith (Mulholland); Robert B. Parker’s Bad Influence, by Alison Gaylin (Putnam); Odyssey’s End, by Matt Coyle (Oceanview); Too Many Bullets, by Max Allan Collins (Hard Case Crime); and Homicide: The Graphic Novel, Parts 1 and 2, by David Simon and Philippe Squarzoni (First Second).
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